Rampage - NES

Rampage for the NES is a port of Bally Midway's landmark 1986 arcade hit — one of the most purely joyful and subversive arcade games ever conceived, designed around a single brilliant premise: what if you were the monster?

Lead designer Brian Colin conceived Rampage as a game in which there was "no wrong way to play" — deliberately eschewing the common video game concepts of having a set objective, competing for a high score, and dying.

Three ordinary Americans were transformed into giant monsters due to various experimental mishaps: George, a scientist who became a King Kong-like gorilla; Lizzie, who became a Godzilla-like lizard; and Ralph, who became a werewolf. Their response to this predicament is entirely sensible: demolish every city in North America. The rampage travels through 128 cities across the United States and Canada — beginning in Peoria, Illinois and ending in Plano, Illinois — with 43 states and two Canadian cities falling victim, while Connecticut, Delaware, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Vermont are mysteriously spared.

Each round is completed when a particular city is completely reduced to rubble, with players punching through building facades to eat food and civilians hidden inside for health while dodging army snipers, police cars, helicopters, and tanks that constantly escalate their assault. When a monster loses all health they shrink back down to their now-naked human form and shuffle away from the screen covering themselves — pressing B before they exit completely transforms them back into their monster and resumes play. The NES version includes infinite continues — exclusively in this port, making the full 128-city rampage theoretically completable by anyone patient enough to see it through. Two players can team up simultaneously as George and Lizzie for cooperative city-smashing mayhem. The NES version excludes Ralph the werewolf, reducing the roster to two monsters — a limitation of the hardware that is the port's most notable omission compared to the three-character arcade original.

The arcade original was developed and published by Bally Midway in 1986 and was one of the last successful titles for the company, and the NES port was published by Data East in 1988. The game spawned five sequels and a 2018 film adaptation starring Dwayne Johnson, with Warner Bros. currently owning all rights to the franchise via their purchase of Midway Games. The arcade original was included in the 2012 compilation Midway Arcade Origins, and the 2006 Rampage: Total Destruction, but the original NES cartridge remains the most nostalgic and collectible physical form of the game — the version that introduced the franchise to an entire generation of console players who may never have set foot in an arcade.

Language: English
Rating: N/A (pre-ESRB release)
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
Genre: Arcade / Action
Players: 1–2 players (simultaneous co-op)
Developer: Midway / Data East
Publisher: Data East
Release Year: 1988